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PODCAST

Better Offline

Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

Better Offline is a weekly show exploring the tech industry’s influence and manipulation of society - and interrogating the growth-at-all-costs future that tech’s elite wants to build. Combining narrative-form storytelling, one-on-one interviews and panel-based discussions, Better Offline cuts through the buzzwords and obfuscation of the tech industry, investigating and evaluating the schemes and scams of everyone from cryptocurrency scumbags to the greediest of the venture capital elite. Tech

technology

All Episodes

56:17

The Academics That Think ChatGPT Is BS

Better Offline ·

2024/07/19

In a paper released earlier this year, three academics from the University of Glasgow classified ChatGPT's outputs not as "lies," but as "BS" - as defined by philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt in "on BS" (and yes I'm censoring that) - and created one of the most enjoyable and prescient papers ever written. In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by academics Michael Townsen Hicks, James Humphries and Joe Slater in a free-wheeling conversation about ChatGPT's mediocrity - and how it's not built to represent

en-US

49:48

Pop Culture

Better Offline ·

2024/07/17

When the money gets nervous, so should you. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through a remarkable report from global investment bank Goldman Sachs where multiple economists call BS on the AI movement - and why it's time for the rest of the world to follow suit. LINKS: https://tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: wheresyoured.at Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/betteroffline Discord chat.wheresyoured.at Ed's Socials - http://www.twitter.com/edzitron instagram.com/edzitron

en-US

55:47

How Shareholders Are Destroying The Tech Industry

Better Offline ·

2024/07/12

The shareholder supremacy has eaten the tech industry, driving private and public companies to chase unprofitable, unsustainable ideas like generative AI as a means of expressing eternal growth to the markets. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how this destructive mindset has created an entirely new kind of manager - one disconnected from labor and creation - and how the dark hand of shareholder supremacy is behind everything strange and bad in tech in the last few years LINKS:

en-US

34:05

The Shareholder Supremacy

Better Offline ·

2024/07/10

In this episode, Ed Zitron tracks the history of the growth-at-all-costs rot economy to a court case in 1916 that established the Shareholder Supremacy, and set the terms for General Electric's Jack Welch to fundamentally break capitalism, an era where companies moved away from building lasting, sustainable companies that created things and instead began focusing on pleasing shareholders - and how it leads to today's terrible tech companies and leaders. LINKS: https://tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

en-US

45:06

I Will Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again Ft. Nik...

Better Offline ·

2024/07/03

A few weeks ago, an Australian tech worker called Nik Suresh wrote an evisceration of the current AI hype boom called "I Will F**king Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again." Ed Zitron and Robert Evans sat down to talk about the blog - and the wider problems that Nik sees in the tech industry at large. LINKS: Nik's blog: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/ Newsletter: wheresyoured.at Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/betteroffline Discord

en-US

94:02

Where Did Tech's Magic Go? Featuring Alex Cranz and...

Better Offline ·

2024/06/26

In a special live-to-tape episode of Better Offline, Ed is joined by The Verge's Alex Cranz and YouTube influencer Michael Fisher to talk about what they're actually enjoying in the tech industry - and why things don't feel quite as magical and exciting as they used to. https://www.youtube.com/@TheMrMobile https://www.theverge.com/authors/alex-cranz See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

en-US

49:00

The Onion Knight Ft. Ben Collins

Better Offline ·

2024/06/21

In April, The Onion was acquired by a new entity called Global Tetrahedron, revealed shortly thereafter to be a joint venture between billionaire Jeff Lawson and former NBC disinformation reporter Ben Collins, now its CEO. Ben joins Ed to talk about buying The Onion, keeping its Chicago roots, and how we can save digital media. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

en-US

33:34

Let Tim Cook

Better Offline ·

2024/06/19

Last week, Apple announced that they're integrating artificial intelligence into your iPhone and Mac in a stunningly demure and reserved presentation. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through whether you should trust Apple - and how OpenAI agreed to the worst deal in tech history to integrate ChatGPT in the least-prominent way.EPISODE LINKS: https://tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

en-US

54:33

Sam Altman Is Dangerous To Silicon Valley

Better Offline ·

2024/06/14

In this episode, Ed Zitron walks through how Sam Altman's ridiculous promises about the future of artificial intelligence could be ruinous for Silicon Valley, and speaks with Bloomberg's Ellen Huet about how Sam Altman - a non-technical founder with little business success - accumulated so much power.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

en-US

55:44

The Talented Mr. Altman

Better Offline ·

2024/06/12

Sam Altman has used his power and influence to become a multi-billionaire with stakes in hundreds of startups, but behind the curtain, he's never run a successful company, fired from both Y Combinator and, briefly, OpenAI. In this episode, Ed Zitron digs into the history of Silicon Valley's most popular confidence man, and talks to the Wall Street Journal's Tom Dotan about Altman's many, many investments. EPSIODE LINKS: https://tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinksSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy

en-US

41:55

The Rot-Com Bust

Better Offline ·

2024/06/07

In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through what happens when tech's growth-at-all-costs epoch begins to collapse, and how the only way to save Silicon Valley is to put power back in the hands of those who actually build things - and reject the management consultant mindset killing innovation.Episode Links: https://tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinksSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

en-US

30:00

The Rot-Com Bubble

Better Offline ·

2024/06/05

Tech's hyper-growth era is ending, with online 100 million new people getting online between 2022 and 2023, and almost every major web platform seeing a decline in growth since 2021. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how tech's decline is driving the tech industry to try and sell you useless products like the metaverse, cryptocurrency and generative AI. Episode Links: https://tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinksSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

en-US

48:42

AI Is Breaking Google

Better Offline ·

2024/05/29

On May 14th 2024, Google introduced their Search Generative Experience, a service that uses hallucination-prone artificial intelligence to generate answers to queries rather than just presenting links, all so that they could Wall Street that they're innovative and future-forward. The result is an even-more-broken search experience, and in this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through the rotten state of Google, and speaks with Lily Ray, a 15-year veteran of the search engine optimization industry, about

en-US

37:29

We're Watching Facebook Die

Better Offline ·

2024/05/24

For three years, Facebook's monthly active users have been declining dramatically, with Facebook.com losing 397 million unique monthly visitors since May 2021. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how Mark Zuckerberg's abominable growth-at-all-costs mindset has turned Facebook into a dystopia of AI-generated slop, dangerous misinformation and outright pornography, all as a result of Zuckerberg's intentionally harmful approach to social media.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy

en-US

45:46

How Mark Zuckerberg Deliberately Made Facebook Worse

Better Offline ·

2024/05/22

In the last decade, Mark Zuckerberg and his internal growth team have repeatedly and intentionally made Facebook and Instagram harder and more dangerous to use in the pursuit of perpetual growth, and in this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through multiple horrifying insider stories about Facebook's disgusting approach to user happiness.LINK for documents: https://www.wheresyoured.at/killingfacebook/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

en-US

44:13

OpenAI's Video Generating AI Is Dead On Arrival

Better Offline ·

2024/05/15

Earlier in the year, OpenAI debuted Sora, an AI that can generate videos that almost look realistic. In this episode, Ed walks through why generating video with AI is a near-impossible task, and speaks with Walter Woodman of Shy Kids, who made a movie called "Air Head" using the tool. LINKS: Shy Kids' Air Head - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4wJ4WeJrz4 Mira Murati Interview with Wall Street Journal:

en-US

54:44

Enron Musk Ft. Ed Niedermeyer

Better Offline ·

2024/05/08

On April 26 2024, the NHTSA, the government body responsible for keeping roads safe, found Tesla's Autopilot and Full-Self-Driving software created a "critical safety gap" with drivers, killing and injuring people in the process, in the very same week that Elon Musk fired most of Tesla's team behind their Supercharger electric vehicle charging moment. Ed Zitron brings on E.W. Niedermeyer, author of Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors, to explain exactly what the hell is going on.See

en-US

38:21

The Cult of Failing Upwards

Better Offline ·

2024/05/01

Ed Zitron walks you through how career manager Adam Mosseri pushed out Instagram's original founders, turning it into an ultra-profitable app that barely works, and how Sam Altman, the so-called hero of the AI boom, is a lobbyist dressed as a technologist best-known for being an absent, self-obsessed demagogue.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

en-US

30:54

The Man That Destroyed Google Search

Better Offline ·

2024/04/25

In this episode, Ed Zitron tells you the disgraceful story of how Prabhakar Raghavan, Google's former head of ads - led a coup so that he could run Google Search, and how an email chain from 2019 began a cascade of events that would lead to the outright decay of the most important website on the internet. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

en-US

34:12

How Managers Are Breaking The Internet

Better Offline ·

2024/04/24

The growth-at-all-costs management consultant mindset has turned most of the modern internet into a painful and profitable social experiment - and in this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how these disconnected, growth-hungry personalities have made Google and Meta abdicate any responsibility toward their users and products.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

en-US

232 results

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